View full sizeAn Indonesian Air Force officer draws a flight pattern flown earlier in a search operation for the missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, during a post-mission briefing at Suwondo air base in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia, Thursday, March 13, 2014. The hunt for the missing jetliner has been punctuated by false leads since it disappeared with 239 people aboard about an hour after leaving Kuala Lumpur for Beijing early Saturday. (AP Photo/Binsar Bakkara)

CNN is reporting that the Malaysian government has acknowledged that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 apparently continued to send data to satellites after the aircraft's last known verbal communication was received by air traffic controllers.

The revelation seems to indicate that the plane continued to fly after it was last heard from by anyone on the ground.

Earlier Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that a highly-placed U.S. official had told the paper that U.S. government investigators believed the plane had flown several hours -- maybe as many as five -- past the point where the craft's transponders with either turned off or disabled by an electrical system failure.

Transponders are devices that answer signals sent by other devices that air traffic controllers use to track aircraft.

"It appears the plane was flying most of that time," the senior U.S.
official told CNN. The story points out that information based on radar readings and the fact that there appears to have been data sent from the plane is what U.S. officials used to make the determination the plane had continued flying.

Earlier today the Malaysian government disputed the WSJ story, saying that neither Boeing, the plane's maker, nor Rolls-Royce, the company that manufactures the engines, received any information from the plane after communications were lost.

In other developments, the U.S. Navy is sending a destroyer, the USS Kidd, to the Indian Ocean to help with the search for the plane that disappeared Saturday with 239 passengers and crew aboard. A senior Pentagon official told ABC News that it will
take another 24 hours to move the USS Kidd into position. The official also said it is believed that the plane had crashed.

"We have an indication the plane went down in the Indian Ocean," the senior official said.

The "pings" are believed to come from the plane's ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System) system -- a parts service data system that transmits information to satellites for downloads by the plane's owner, Malaysia Airlines; it's builder, Boeing, and the engine manufacturer, Rolls-Royce.